Collusion: Part XXXIII

It was raining. Those slow... ridiculously mournful rains. The kinds in films about suicide, or genocide. Some sort of 'icide.' I had taken to being the consummate recluse. I had completely devoted myself to my studies, and piano. And to be honest, I was convinced that any day I was going to be called into the Dean of Men's office at school and explain to a perfectly awful stranger, how I wasn't a homosexual.

There was an alcove at the back of the museum that I was fond of. A wooden statue of the virgin Mary stood at the end of a very long very dark hall way. Rooms twisted and split off from it here and there. Here a place to sit... there an ancient set of panels from a church long sunken beneath the grass in eastern Germany. Rooms on and on forever. All half lit, and bruised with the deep reds and purples of thick thick carpet that ate up all the stray sound. I loved this place. I got paid to sit and study note cards for hours. Days on end. There were quite a bit of really great art too. There had already been that falling out with the rest of the members of the Senate, and as a result I had pulled back and cut off all contact with these malicious people. I reasoned that if I had been their friend for this long... and now they were after me... what next? Would they slap a jew? Would they eat their young? I couldnt tell.
So... I stayed away. I read things. I journaled ferociously. In various colors of metallic inks. Angry words. Bitter words. Wounded words. I should have felt sorry for Hannibal. Pressing and jabbing into his spine everything that made me uncomfortable. It wasn't a fair fight that's for sure.

I was terrified. What if... the worst came to the worst? What if... I was expelled? I'd be out a job. Out of an education... and ya know, with the gun slingers in my family ... out in the street.

There was a window that ran from floor to ceiling behind Mary. Double pained plate glass. The rain had caused most of the window to fog. The window was dressed in lengths of wine colored satin that dropped from the ceiling on either sides of the glass. The whole bit was impressive. Serene, I thought.  I stood there staring up at Mary. She'd been cut from wood some time ago, and was beginning to split down the back. No doubt the temperature and humidity had been something of a challenge throughout her life. A fight she wasn't really winning. She was painted. In dark night-black blues. Her face a pearl and varnish color. She looked so very removed. I wished I could have followed her down whatever paths she had taken...

I stood there for some minutes. My expression blank as I thought about all the things that had come to, in the past few weeks. How X and I needed back up plans. And plans to back up those back up plans... Weighing my options with numerous outcomes. At each turn of an idea, there would be another possibility that I hadn't thought of. A new piece of data to add to the algorithm. All of it... had left me... blank. I looked out at all of the limitations of my abilities. My finances and my emotional fortuity. Against it all I felt so very much like a sand castle. No one is just sure when it's going to get swept out. But... It's going to either way.

"Medhead."

I breathed in quick and deep as I heard her voice.

"What are you looking at?"

I didn't reply for a moment. "I was watching the water. It's beading up.... on the window..." I said. Still very much inundated with my own thoughts.

"I haven't heard much from you for a little bit... tell me. How have you been?"

I turned around to face her. Tall. Thin to distraction. Large oval eyes, with heavy lashes... doe-like and inquisitive. A pert face with perfect ivory skin and a tiny little mouth. She was beautiful. Everyone said so. Everyone. And no one could argue. It's just what she was. She always kept a ratty little hair cut that you couldnt decide was more mod, or more lesbian. And she dressed like a gypsy.
Today though she was all in black as dress code required. Her name is Louretta.

"I've... just." I was terrified of this girl. This girl with her mind and her wit. He attention to detail and the sorts of questions she asked. In truth there was a time when I had felt such a kind-ship with her. I loved how painstakingly intelligent she was... How actively her mind begged her to create and how easily she slid from one social group to the next. But as I would learn later, that is precisely what a moth feels before it scuffs a flame and becomes a cinder.

"I've been trying to keep up with my practice regiment." I pushed out. Putting all of my secret thoughts away... far far back on the shelves in case she could read minds as well as she could read a face.

Louretta reminded me of the girl that I had seen in my dreams the other night. They were both thin with razor sharp chin bones.

There were many afternoons since she and I had the fortune to become gallery guards here in meandering halls of the museum, that we would chat pleasantries. We had made a game of things. Surrounded by so much opulence, we had imagined ourselves to be courtesans. The gentility of our conversation was as tedious and as thick as the tapestries that hung mute from the walls and passed silent judgment over the modern era.

We talked about poetry. About what she was working on in her creative writing classes. About her boyfriend Ronny. About whatever. But not so today. Today words had reached her. Today the pleasantries had a different bent. And… what was that new scent that she was wearing? It smelled like…. Malice.

“You’ve seemed different lately…” She said. Leaning gracefully on a door jam. The cocked her head a bit to the side and pouted a little bit. “You’ve been quiet. It’s not like you.”

Louretta had grown up in Britain. A missionaries child, and every now and then to add salt to her conversation, she allowed a bit of this accent to peak out from behind her vowels. She thought, I believed that it added an aristocratic edge to her presence. And you know, at the time it was a bit intimidating. Whenever she was around I felt too small for my clothes. And I fidgeted ever so slightly with my hair.

“I’ve been thinking about things. Ya know, and practicing an awful lot. I have deadlines… and I’m worried about not meeting them.” I offered fingering the flash cards that I had brought along. 

“Well that’s a very wise of you to devote so much time to your studies. I wish I could boast such fortitude.” She said. She always spoke this way. As if an encyclopedia had slipped on ballet flats and started menstruating.

“Don’t you think you should be investing in a small group of friends? You know, people that you may stay in touch with after school is over?” She asked as she began walking heel-to-toe in a pattern on the thick carpet. She had let those British vowel sounds peek out when she said “you know…” I sighed.

“I would if I found there was anyone worth putting any time into. I would if I felt… certain liberties that do not exist in this… penitentiary.” I offered back to this bleak little fish… swimming in circles in the hall.

“Ah…” “Oh I see,” She said. She stopped her walking for a moment and raised one eye and looked at me. Then she went back to walking.

I had no idea who she’d been speaking to. And like I said. The Senate had wasted no time in speaking their minds about my relationships. Why is everyone so interested in penetration? Who’s getting it. Who’s doing it. So very carnal. People are crass. Especially college kids. Especially college kids who haven’t gotten any in a while.

“Something just seems changed in you… Something’s different.” She continued. Half to herself. I was begging to be a bit tried of her. “Something’s gone.” And with this she looked dead at me. Oh Louretta. Always with the flair for drama.

I have to say, If it was anyone else with these vague concerns. These ominous observances that seem like the types of things  you might say to a stranger after you had tossed a bunch of chicken bones and read their fortune, I wouldn’t have minded. Mostly I wouldn’t have listened. But this was someone different. Someone I felt I could… trust.  

“It’s your eyes.”

“What?” I asked…

“You’re eyes.” She said. “They’re all black now… They used to be green…. There used to be light in them, and now… there’s nothing.”

“Oh…” I guess I hadn’t noticed.

There was a sound of a group coming in the hall. We moved back into the positions we were expected to hold. Statues in black suit coats. Arms folded behind our backs.

I was boiling with mute anger. Someone had spoken to her.

Black eyes. What did she know. There was nothing wrong with me. Nothing.

And if there was… I didn’t want to fix it.

 


 

Collusion: Part XXX

Circle. Moon. Earth. Symbolic of an extraterrestrial sort of intelligence. Thought patters run in them. All sustainable systems burn in cycles. Perhaps the incidents that come to have the most meaning in our lives are those moments when a tangent forces the end of a cycle… and then enacts permanently bonded change. A mother gives birth. Your dog gets hit by a truck as you look on. You remember exactly the moment when… she broke your heart.

But which patterns are healthy ones? It’s hard to tell sometimes.

I have to share reader, that I find writing be a little tangent for me. I can almost hear a bottle cap pop when I begin. Though really Im never precisely certain what Ill be pouring one day to the next. Water? Or Sweet Tea? Blackberry wine? Or Jack? Or Pepsi? To some degree or another. Who cares? I’m dumping shit out.

As I have to some degree waxed nostalgic of a late… I’ll follow this path for a time. As I have mentioned before I was quite a voracious reader as a child. The tiny dusty white library was in St. Matthews. A short drive into town would bring me within reach of the thing that I craved most. Knowledge. It felt more intimate than the sort of statistics that you rattle off when you’re trying to be impressive though. It felt like I could leave the dirt roads and wet heat and soy bean fields beneath me and I could float up and up… To every which way but back down. 

The librarians were a mysterious thing to me. Most of the were nearly fallen into their tombs with age, and their accents were all something Mayberry. I had heard their names many times, but that always slipped my mind when Mom would take us by the place. I was rather a shy child. And you know, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. I suppose at the time I was uncomfortably aware of it though. I always wondered what others thought of me.

My Mother was very scrupulous of what she allowed me to check out from the library. She understood that books are just as dangerous as a loaded gun in the night stand. Perhaps more so. Books are tangents also. The books that we had laying around the house had been read and re read and I arrived at the feeling of curiosity about what other books might have to say. I had first thought that all the reading in our little white library might be only more of the same as what we had at home. Or that the books in the little white library would be a reflection of the building itself. That they would be sinless… sturdy… dusty. This was not so. I’d sooner vote republican.

I chose the books that I brought up to the counter judiciously. Weighing carefully the likely hood that Mom would read the spine, or not be over fond of the cover… and tell me to put it back. I didn’t really understand why should would find some in poorer taste than others… but who can say why, at that age mothers do what they do. Mothers are arbitrary.

Along and Along as we made more trips to and from the little white library I noticed that mom was paying less attention to the books I picked out. She would perhaps be using the computers, or talking with a librarian. And then of course there was John and Beth to be concerned about. I saw an opportunity to use less discretion in my selections… and so I decided to do just that. It was as much fun as throwing glitter.

I was a stealthy thing though. Hmmmm yes. I would pick two or so boring books that I knew Mom would find appropriate… and then slide something in between them. Whichever one I found most intriguing. The one that I would read thirstily and blithely ignore the others. Once I found a treasure trove of a read in Anne Rice’s ‘The Witching Hour.’ So adeptly sensuous. So filled with over wrought emotion. Fantastical tales about witchcraft. And… And women. And shockingly vivid vampires… and sex. There were so many things I thought I understood about the story when I read them. Rice painted. She worked for those words and that story. This little boy thought she was some sort of genius of the criminal mastermind variety.

There were other books too. There was one titled ‘speak.’ It was by some somebody that I cant remember. In it I was introduced to a 9^th grade girl. Something was very wrong with her… but I couldn’t tell what. This girl didn’t pray or go to church or anything. She cried often, and hardly spoke to anyone at school. She cut herself sometimes. Turns out though it made sense by the end of the book. She had been raped by one of her peers in a broom closet at school. The closing scenes were fantastic! She fought the boy, with his wanton and filthy desires… he was chocking her… and he pushed her head hard into a mirror. It broke. As the fight moved to the floor she snatched a shard of the thing and stabbed that horrible boy in the neck. And ya know? Good for her! I wanted to give her a hug…

I drank up Tolkien. All the way to the Silmarillion. Which didn’t make a lick of sense until I read it again. It was an intoxicating story of … well a sort of retelling of the Greek myths with name changes.

Dickenson. Shakespeare. Blake. Emmerson. Shelly. Some Bible.

I replicated this process innumerable times. I longed to feel… beyond. And so I did. Each new story began something. The marks that those books left on me are permanent.

I wonder if I still have anything that’s due.

Collusion: Part XXIX

We all have those memories that stand out. The ones that stand up to the challenges of a regenerating cerebral cortex. And as time goes on they tend to melt into a rosy softness. Like watching old movies. And each time we replay them they confirm to us that we are... self. The same self that we remember. If we're lucky enough sometimes... those memories enact physical change upon us.

I was running. I was were those hand-me-down clothes that 5 year olds get from church friends. We were laughing. In the simple and pure way that only 5 year olds can laugh. It was effervescent. And the sound of it glinted of the wooden vaulted ceiling of the sanctuary. I was dashing around on my nimble little legs and darting through clusters of worshipers who were milling about the auditorium chatting about this or that. Middle aged guys who had married too early because they got somebody pregnant. Old couples who like stones... never aged past antique. Frilly fabrics covered in 90's floral patters. Lots of of blues. Kaki pants all over. A suit here and there. And in the center aisle... A missionary was setting up a slide projector. I have no memory of what the missionary looked like. But I do remember dim flashes of Africa and in the half light.

We were always there early. Dad's office was usually a bustle with people who just wanted to chat. To get advice about their lives... or gossip about other peoples life. Either way. I darted in and around the aisles... I was trying to catch up with Gary.... who was way ahead and Dustin was chasing him. Dustin was probably my best friend at the time. And we used to build make believe houses and go hunting for make believe tigers in the woods behind his house.

Then... I tripped I guess.


Something like 48 seconds passing. And I got up. Ouch, I thought. But oddly... it didn't hurt at all. I looked around for where the other boys had gotten off to... But I didn't see them. Maybe they had headed out and into the vestibule? Running had made me hot, so I hardly noticed the my face was wet... for a few moments. Though I was soon away that it was much more wet than usual... a hot stream ran down the bridge of my nose and skipped sticky and salty over my lips. I kept walking and put my hand up to my face. I pulled it away and it was shining and red.


Oh... I thought.


I was aware of people and movement around me... But one in particular caught my attention. Dustin's mom was in the hall. She was my kindergarten teacher. She had taught me how to tie shoes... and she had taught me numbers. And words like 'cat.' She screamed. It scared me... She never screams....

She yelled for my mom. "Laurie! Laurie! Josh is hurt.... Come here!" Things started happening. Everyone had sad faces now. They were shocked at how much blood I was losing. Dustin's mom found something to press against my head. But it didn't seem to help much. It was a dish towel. Dustin's mom is named Mrs. Bates. Darleen I believe.
Mom was here now. I hadn't cried yet... but when I saw her cry, I started crying too. Moms are not supposed to cry... Especially not my mom. Not Laurie.

My mom picked me up. I remember to this day that they chose an obvious option. The hospital. Darleen would drive. Momma carried me out... down the sidewalk. I remember the exact cut and color of the dress she was wearing. A silky looking thing. Mostly blue and floral. We got in Darleen's Jeep. I had always wanted to ride in that Jeep... And I was thinking how lucky I was to finally be getting to do that. I sat on mom's lap on the drive. She held me close to her like I was a baby again. I was still bleeding hard... and as we shifted positions... some blood skirted out from under the towel and rolled beaded down the shoulder of her dress.
"Oh... I'm sorry. I've got blood on you." I told her around the towel.
"It's fine sweetie. I can wash it out." Mom said.
"I hope it does." I said.

Darleen provided much needed distraction.
"Don't you worry about that dress honey! You just stay awake! The dress don't matter a bit!" She said sounding like Scarlett O'Harah. She was waving her arms.

We waited at the hospital for a long... long time. I had stopped bleeding so much. I was playing with toy cars in the waiting room.... Dad was there now. John and Beth were elsewhere. No doubt sleeping over at the Bates'. Lucky ducks.

The nurse took me back to the OR. I could see my mom through the plate glass window... watching. worried. I screamed at them to let her in. I wanted her in there with me. Finally they let her. She had to help them hold me down as they push needles into my head.

When I woke up there were 40 stitches in my forehead. I had cut it to the bone on the corner of a pew.
Ya know all that has cause me to think about pain differently. I mean sure it hurts. But you just might get to ride in that Jeep you've been wanting to...

Addendum

I have a tiger in my chest, 

It's cage was spun from silk.

Woven daily, and precise,

It purrs, I feed it milk.

The cage that I am weaving,

Keeps the tiger hidden deep.

But at night his playground- jungle,

Is my mind while I sleep.

This monster of my keeping,

Is strong and swift and white, 

He was not meant for taming, 

but for murder in the night. 

With new rope I hide em daily, 

sew him out of sight and thought, 

The isolation keeps me living, 

but the peace is labor bought. 

I found him just a kitten, 

I took him to my house to play, 

But now, he's grown to prowl and hunt,

And break and kill his prey.

I have a tiger in my chest, 

containment, lust and lies.

So mend the fence, and lock the cage,

and if he's loose, we die.

Untitled.

Five hours a day,

That's the way,

A week to lift the spirit,

Sit in Green or Red or Blue, 

That gum, you must not chew it.

This way that, 

Don't wear a hat,

Please "Get in the building."

Sing with the rest, 

and you'll be blessed,

Your morals need the gilding. 

Please, please come in, 

and let's be friends, 

Fear God. Give us your money.

And laugh and laugh at all our jokes,

Though they're not all that funny.

Fundraiser for the Christian right...

Loan us your bleedin' pennies.

It's a spectacle of majesty, 

Are not our splendors many?

Save your lofty rhetoric,

I'll wait until you live it, 

The ushers reek of razor-speak,

Push and demand and pivot.

Believe! Believe! and 

Follow us to metal euthanasia!

No thanks....

I'm good.

I'll see ya.

Collusion: Part XII

Words. Powerful words. They take shape and leave our mouths. Such harmless little things made out of carbon dioxide. Little puffs of a toxin and a bit of vibration made with teeth and tongue. Or little symbols on white paper. These are the tools that we use to fabricate community. How odd that stubby doses of poison should give us so much... should become a deity of sorts making so many choices for us.

Collusion celebrated 1,000 page views this week and I cant think of a better way to slide into Christmas than by inviting my friends and my foes to collude with me. To follow the pied piper. To admit to ourselves if only for those moments that we share with our thoughts and a computer screen that corruption is everywhere. It is who we are. It's the one thing that you can be sure of in any new person that you meet. And why is corruption so pervasive, you might ask? That's simple! because its so delicious.

Christmas break droned on. We chopped wood for the fireplace. A great hulking thing that's the centerpiece of the largest room in my house. Enormous 13 and 15 foot logs my dad had chainsawed into submission were piled up in my back yard at the edge of the woods; and every other day or so my brother, or my dad or myself would take an axe and cut away enough wood for the next couple of cold nights.
I'm from a very close-nit community. In a town that cant have a population of more than 3000 people. Its so rural as to be cliche. As ive mentioned before, people farm there. They have all their lives. Their fathers did, and their father's fathers did. Our neighbors all came to church with us. A church which my father had left the sins of his wild youth to found, and one which he continues to lead to this day. As i consider it, most of my early musical training was intended for use in worship. As a result, I have a mental database of hundreds of hymn tunes that I can play with my eyes closed, in any key. When I was home over Christmas break I fell neatly back into the roles that I had played before. At home and at church as well. All told it was a congregation of about 40 people. The number changed from season to season as southern people tend to have disagreements about such highly important religious matters as women who wear pants and those obviously diabolical members of the congregation who attend movie theaters. No joke. Anyways, our church services met twice on sundays and once on wednesday nights. We all met in a beige corrugated metal church building in the middle of a seven acre field of green lawn, behind one of those stone and metal church signs that you can rearrange letters on. You can make them say whatever you like...

"POT LUCK THIS SUNDAY!"

or

"DO RIGHT 'TIL THE STARS FALL"

or

"CHCH. WHAT'S MISSING!? U R!"

My dad was mostly responsible for these messages. One could always rely on them to be inspiring. The members of the church were the most fascinating group of people on the planet. All ok, plain folks with thick syrupy accents. Loud women who wore too much mascara, and ate too much red meat. And quiet men who sat beside these women.

I liked church. I loved the routine of it all. The ritual. We gather... sing old old songs about christ's blood and its power to make us perfect. We'd pray, or be lead in prayer... and then my father would preach a message about sin. Faith. Or the evils and destructing force of extra marital sex. His sermons were all peppered with his own brand of gawdy obvious humor. I have so memorized the lilting pace of my fathers sermons that i can predict what he's going to say next. It's a type of relationship that not many people have the opportunity to experience with their fathers and as such I feel quite lucky to have grown up that way. Each facet of my fathers belief system was made plainly evident written out in hour after hour of monologue. Layers and walls. A labyrinth of hedges looping and twisting into a maze of 'do' and 'do nots.' Sermon after sermon I received a powerful view of this bank of rules.... Fascinating and complex.

The music leader at my church is named Charles. Charles McMillan. He's a man of colossal girth. I estimate that he weighs very close to five hundred pounds, and oddly enough is still mobile. He's been a friend of the families for as long as i could remember. Apparently at one time he was quite average size, but from what ive been able to gather; a love interest in college left him with emotional scars that he had tried to patch up with lots and lots of brisket. Charles is roughly 46 years old. He has been in charge of all the songs sung, and all the notes played at our little community church for very close to 10 years i suppose. Charles and I had been cordial to one another since I had met him until one day when I had prepared a little piano piece for church, he told me that i was "never going to be a good pianist unless i learned to read music." As you can imagine... the comment did very bad things for a cordial relationship.  My playing from sight was remedial at best. Lessons had been cast away patch work things with hit or miss training from country bumpkins who owned pianos. Ah well.
From that moment however Charles and I became mortal enemies. If the both of us were in a room you could feel the temperature drop. The water vapor in the air would instantly crystallize. Charles was part of the reason for my pursuing piano so decidedly throughout highschool... and undeniably had something to do with my two year stint with bulimia when I was 17 and 18.

During holiday services Charles and I danced our icy dance of cordiality and hatred like two quiet little pageant queens; needing attention much as daisies need sunlight. And so i passed away the few days that remained of my break from school. In a very few days i would return to what was sure to be hostile environment. I would be stronger than those boys at school though. They'd see. They wouldn't break me.